I have a very basic list of supplies and even then I get the SS parents who will NOT get the supplies. 2 70 page notebooks (.17 each), 2 pencils (10pack .50), 2 pens (10 pack .97), folder with prongs (.10 each). I supply markers, color pencils, hand sanitizer, paper towel, copy paper, dry erase markers, extra paper, and so on. There have been years where I get to itemize my taxes for the couple thousand that I spend on supplies.

SS parent this year - child comes in every day with a bag of hot chips, a bottle of soda, a subway sandwich, and a few dollars for the afterschool concession stand. I have spoken with the parents only to get the excuse that they cannot afford supplies. How about you skip subway or the junk food one day and get your kid some paper and pencils?

One of the things that got me was hand sanitizer and hand soap , it seemed repetitive(they did have a sink in the classroom) dry erase makers would have made me batty ,is there something I don;t know about black boards?

The problem with handwashing is that it takes far longer than giving each kid a squirt of hand sanitizer. If you had 25 students and one sink, how long does it take for everyone to wash their hands? Keeping in mind that a class may have 25 minutes for lunch, even having each child wash their hands in 30 seconds will cut into the lunch time substantially. And trying to continue educational time while kids wash their hands (Susie, it's your turn now, the rest of you keep working) is disruptive.As for blackboards...once they've been removed from the classroom and replaced with white boards, you're pretty much stuck. Chalkboards also create a lot of chalk dust, which can create a problem for people sensitive to it. Yes, we used to ignore that when I was a kid- but then, they also whipped the ADHD kids for fidgeting.

That and 5 years old at a sink tend to make a bit of a mess I do understand the hand sanitizer, I just thought asking each child(25 ish) for a bottle of hand soap in addition was repetitive.

Heck, even in the Dark Ages, we started the year with school supplies. I don't remember the teacher sending home a list; certainly it would have been a lot shorter (I'm pretty sure no one was expected to bring boxes of tissues, and hand sanitizer didn't exist.) But we were expected to have pencils, notebook, eraser, crayons, etc.

Come to think of it, there must of been some kind of list. In first grade, I was supposed to have thick pencils for some reason. The teacher kept telling me to use the fat pencils; my mother kept refusing to buy fat pencils because we had lots of regular pencils. Why did they keep telling me instead of each other?

I certainly understand getting frustrated with the sheer amount of stuff parents have to buy. School supplies for two kids ran me almost $200, counting sturdy backpacks. I had to buy the usual notebooks, paper, giant packs of pencils and pens, but I also had to buy plastic gallon bags, tissue, paper plates, paper cups, hand sanitizer, and dry erase markers for the classroom whiteboard. The amount of stuff that parents are expected to provide for classroom wide use is getting ridiculous.

But I certainly don't condone the way the dad behaved

One of the things that got me was hand sanitizer and hand soap , it seemed repetitive(they did have a sink in the classroom) dry erase makers would have made me batty ,is there something I don;t know about black boards? I respect teachers several people in my family are teachers but I remember 1st grade no teachers aid , no student teachers , no twice daily parent volunteers, no wet wipes ect... I don't see that my son came out of 1st grade with an experience that was better by 500 man-hours and $3000 dollars in supplies more expensive. I'm not complaining just musing about all the 'improvements " and how much they actually enriched education.

Chalkboards - Generally are not used because the dust created is not good for the computers.

Dry erase - Also I can have my kids use their entire desk for problem solving with a dry erase marker. We don't ask for these, but I buy them every 3 - 5 weeks or so. Example 1example 2

Soap - our school provides

Hand sanitizer - I'm more likely to use that to clean off the kids desks after a day or two of problem solving with dry erase markers. Than to clean the kids hands. Soap and water is better, and our school tends to serve things like hamburgers that the kids touch the food. I hate the taste of sanitizer in my food. Flu season they use both. Quick clean with sanitizer then wash with soap and water.

Wet wipes, Good for a quick clean up. So we aren't dripping paint down the breezeway to the bathrooms. We have 1 sink and 60 kids the pod (Most pods have around 80 but 1 of our 4 rooms is Reading Recovery).

Computers/tablets/other tech - reality kids need to learn how to use them properly and integrated into all subjects not a different subject.

Also don't assume the teachers set the list or have any say in them at all. Ours is set by the district and we have ZERO say. We have tried to get things changed or removed completely (Like 3 inch binders that don't fit anywhere then the teacher gets written up because they look a mess) only to be told the district knows better, and the school built 2 years ago has no trouble storing them in a neat way. Of course they have shelves built in. My school was built in 1966, my cupboards doors can't be shut because they are uneven, I have "book case that is 9 feet long, that is more of a parallelogram because it has no back, no reinforcement at the corners.

Kariachi - I have the opposite of your story. Because I'm so paranoid about misspelling kids names, I often copy and past them from computer records. So a Mom complained that I was spelling her daughter's name wrong. The name could be spelled with a S or a Z. On the enrollment forms the Mom and written a Z but with rounded corners that looked like a backwards S. So the clerk and entered an S. All the teachers from PK - 4th had handwritten everything- so the Mom never noticed that some wrote an S instead of a Z. Because I typed everything she noticed. It was a mess to straighten out because she had taken TAKS in 3rd and 4th and her records on those had her name spelled wrong.

My cousin was named for someone. Her first and last name rhymed but her parents never intended for her to go by her first name she was to go by her Middle name. Well when she was in Kinder or 1st she had a teacher who REFUSED to call her by her Middle name because the register said her first name. Even after my Aunt, who you do not want to cross, spoke to her. So Aunt withdrew cousin, and reenrolled her the next day with J. Middle Name Last Name instead of spelling out the first name. She was called by her middle name after that.

Mom was also named after someone and went by a common nickname for that name. When she first went to school, she didn't really realize that her name was Proper name instead of nickname. So when the teacher called roll, Mom kept looking around for Aunt Proper Name because her Name was nickname. So the teacher, who knew full well who Mom was, punished her with the ruler. Then she did it again because Mom kept using her left hand. My grandfather took one look at that bruised swollen hand - and verbally took the teacher and principal apart. He made it crystal clear that there would be a huge amount of trouble if any of his kids were ever hit again. Mom was moved into the only other class for her age because the teacher was convinced that Mom using her left hand was a sign of the devil.

1) If there is a class set of mini whiteboards, each kid having a dry erase marker is necessary.These are great for math and such. Why 4? They will lose them. No, I do not do communal stuff in 6th grade, but I assure you, they will lose them. A few won't, most will.

2) I don't care you if get 100 pages instead of 70! Do what's cheaper! We even say that!

3) I don't make the list to annoy parents, I swear.

As for a snowflake story, how about the one who emailed the varsity coach, complaining that her 10th grade son didn't make the team, despite never having shown up for any clinics and 2/3 days of tryouts. Clinics aren't mandatory, but they certainly help to refine skills. Oh well. (He wasn't the only one cut....)

One of the things that got me was hand sanitizer and hand soap , it seemed repetitive(they did have a sink in the classroom) dry erase makers would have made me batty ,is there something I don;t know about black boards?

The problem with handwashing is that it takes far longer than giving each kid a squirt of hand sanitizer. If you had 25 students and one sink, how long does it take for everyone to wash their hands? Keeping in mind that a class may have 25 minutes for lunch, even having each child wash their hands in 30 seconds will cut into the lunch time substantially. And trying to continue educational time while kids wash their hands (Susie, it's your turn now, the rest of you keep working) is disruptive.As for blackboards...once they've been removed from the classroom and replaced with white boards, you're pretty much stuck. Chalkboards also create a lot of chalk dust, which can create a problem for people sensitive to it. Yes, we used to ignore that when I was a kid- but then, they also whipped the ADHD kids for fidgeting.

That and 5 years old at a sink tend to make a bit of a mess I do understand the hand sanitizer, I just thought asking each child(25 ish) for a bottle of hand soap in addition was repetitive.

Thing is - all of it will get used. Repetitive or not, the teacher can either ask each parent to chip in one bottle at the beginning or spend $100 out of pocket on refill soap.

As for supplies, you can't win for losing. I have taught at schools where you get 1 pack (pack, not case) per semester. You use that up printing semester exams. If you don't get copy paper you get parents complaining about the fact that little Johnny is using too much paper and admin complaining that you are using class time inefficiently by having them copy their own notes. Ask parents for one pack of copy paper each - complaints and half of them still won't supply it. Buy it yourself and spend about $150 for paper - how much exactly am I supposed to give to educate someone else's child?

This does not count the things I have to buy as needed during the year - this is what I START with. I still have a copy of the epic tax return with over $2000 in supplies itemized. A couple of friends who retired this year gifted me with part of their hoard so I've only spent about $20 this year. That will definitely go up.

PCs weren't around then. She did get his profs to let him type all his papers, and to forgive his spelling. Yeah, she went above and beyond for him. He became a family friend. He has had to fight all his life against prejudices against him because he can't spell.

Emperor Augustus (first emperor of Rome) was supposed to have had problems with his spelling - due to a lack of education (as nobility went, his blood was good but his family was NOT rich and his education was not of the first quality) - as Emperor, he was supposed to have kept using the wrong spelling from pride & because people "knew" which word he really meant....

So poor spelling has a long history - from a variety of causes. I empathize. When writing, there are several ie/ei words that I have to recite the full rules of to try to get it right - and I still use Spell Check when on the computer!

One of the things that got me was hand sanitizer and hand soap , it seemed repetitive(they did have a sink in the classroom) dry erase makers would have made me batty ,is there something I don;t know about black boards?

The problem with handwashing is that it takes far longer than giving each kid a squirt of hand sanitizer. If you had 25 students and one sink, how long does it take for everyone to wash their hands? Keeping in mind that a class may have 25 minutes for lunch, even having each child wash their hands in 30 seconds will cut into the lunch time substantially. And trying to continue educational time while kids wash their hands (Susie, it's your turn now, the rest of you keep working) is disruptive.As for blackboards...once they've been removed from the classroom and replaced with white boards, you're pretty much stuck. Chalkboards also create a lot of chalk dust, which can create a problem for people sensitive to it. Yes, we used to ignore that when I was a kid- but then, they also whipped the ADHD kids for fidgeting.

That and 5 years old at a sink tend to make a bit of a mess I do understand the hand sanitizer, I just thought asking each child(25 ish) for a bottle of hand soap in addition was repetitive.

Thing is - all of it will get used. Repetitive or not, the teacher can either ask each parent to chip in one bottle at the beginning or spend $100 out of pocket on refill soap.

As for supplies, you can't win for losing. I have taught at schools where you get 1 pack (pack, not case) per semester. You use that up printing semester exams. If you don't get copy paper you get parents complaining about the fact that little Johnny is using too much paper and admin complaining that you are using class time inefficiently by having them copy their own notes. Ask parents for one pack of copy paper each - complaints and half of them still won't supply it. Buy it yourself and spend about $150 for paper - how much exactly am I supposed to give to educate someone else's child?

This does not count the things I have to buy as needed during the year - this is what I START with. I still have a copy of the epic tax return with over $2000 in supplies itemized. A couple of friends who retired this year gifted me with part of their hoard so I've only spent about $20 this year. That will definitely go up.

I'm not saying I didn't supply both the hand sanitizer and liquid hand soap.

PCs weren't around then. She did get his profs to let him type all his papers, and to forgive his spelling. Yeah, she went above and beyond for him. He became a family friend. He has had to fight all his life against prejudices against him because he can't spell.

Emperor Augustus (first emperor of Rome) was supposed to have had problems with his spelling - due to a lack of education (as nobility went, his blood was good but his family was NOT rich and his education was not of the first quality) - as Emperor, he was supposed to have kept using the wrong spelling from pride & because people "knew" which word he really meant....

So poor spelling has a long history - from a variety of causes. I empathize. When writing, there are several ie/ei words that I have to recite the full rules of to try to get it right - and I still use Spell Check when on the computer!

Spell check won't catch words that are spelled correctly but used incorrectly. You/you're/your, they're/their/there, lots of others. Google for 'Ladle Rat Rotten Hut'; while it wasn't originally intended to demonstrate the fallibility of spell-check, it does a marvelous job. And often spell-check will 'correct' things the wrong way. If you spell 'definitely' as 'definately' auto-correct will make it into 'defiantly'. (And don't get me started on the grammar checker!)

Logged

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~It's true. Money can't buy happiness. You have to turn it into books first. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Spell check won't catch words that are spelled correctly but used incorrectly. You/you're/your, they're/their/there, lots of others. Google for 'Ladle Rat Rotten Hut'; while it wasn't originally intended to demonstrate the fallibility of spell-check, it does a marvelous job. And often spell-check will 'correct' things the wrong way. If you spell 'definitely' as 'definately' auto-correct will make it into 'defiantly'. (And don't get me started on the grammar checker!)

Don't even get me started on how the iPad autorrects "its" to "it's." Whether or not that's right.

Actually, I kind of like #2. That is because, when my mother was working in a university's reading & study skills help department, she came across a student who was getting lousy grades; Ds and Fs. He didn't really deserve them, because he was brilliant, and knew his subjects - but his profs couldn't read what he wrote. Awful handwriting, and terrible spelling.

My mom, in spite of lacking credentials, had an instinct for detecting learning disabilities just from reading the students' papers. She suspected dyslexia and sent him for that testing.

Not only did he have dyslexia, but it was profound. It was stunning that he had even graduated from high school, let alone gotten Ds in college.

PCs weren't around then. She did get his profs to let him type all his papers, and to forgive his spelling. Yeah, she went above and beyond for him. He became a family friend. He has had to fight all his life against prejudices against him because he can't spell.

Sounds like a friend who has a daughter with what she calls "stealth dyslexia" (not sure if that's a real name or not). Basically, her daughter is brilliant. So brilliant, that the fact she's also extremely dyslexic was hidden really well as long as she was just reading, because her mind was able to make the huge leaps that it took to recognize words even without being able to process the order of the letters properly. She was reading on something crazy, like college level, by third grade. But in third grade, her mother started really working with her on spelling, and she realized that her daughter couldn't reliably spell the word "she." In third grade. After a MONTH of working on it. And when her daughter could read on a college level! That was when she realized that something was wrong. I guess the daughter was just able to compensate for the issue so much that it didn't become apparent until she had to learn to spell.

Schools in California did supply almost everything you needed in Elementary school, at least through the end of the 1990s when no one in my family was in elementary school anymore. I grew up there and remember just getting a folder to bring stuff home because I didn't want it to get messed up. And later elementary buying pens with erasers because the school supplied one were just very plain ball points.

Middle school and up you did have to supply stuff, but you didn't get lists except maybe from the science teacher directly. Otherwise you just got what every pens, pencils, notebooks etc you wanted to use.

I have confirmed this memory with my Mother, because now I live in a state where you get a long list each year of specific school supplies to bring. The first year I had a child in Kindergarten I asked her as I wondered if I had just forgotten school lists.

Hah! Maybe in YOUR neighborhood in California they supplied everything in the 90's, but not in the two widely separated school districts my children attended in California - from 1990 in Southern California to 2007 in Northern California - K-12 - I had a long list of things to supply for my kids. The older they got, the shorter but more pricey the items were.

And as SOON as school supplies were all bought, they sent out fund raiser notices that you HAD to participate in, and during our tenure, opting out and giving them a check for "let's don't and say we did" wasn't possible. We did that as soon as it became possible. Free public schools in California went the way of the dodo decades ago. I don't think there was a single month of the school year during which we weren't expected to spend for something.

Logged

Newly widowed, fairly cranky, prone to crying at the drop of a hat. Newly a MIL; not yet a Grandma. Keeper of chickens and dispenser of eggs! Owner of Lard Butt Noelle, kitteh extraordinaire!

From GhostBusters:Dr Ray Stantz: "Symmetrical book stacking. Just like the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947."Dr. Peter Venkman: "You're right, no human being would stack books like this."

This reminds me of a recent SS encounter. A local theater shows classic movies and a few weeks ago they showed Ghostbusters - a favorite I never got to see on the big screen because I was only 3 when it came out. I guess times have changed though because one couple brought their 2 toddlers (maybe 3/4 years old?). For the ENTIRE movie, every 2 minutes I got to hear their little voices asking, "Mommy!! Why are they laughing??" "Mommy!!! What is funny??"